Texas has been grappling with the slow down in power plant construction for years. And they’re not alone.

Across the United States and Europe a flood of cheap natural gas and the wider adoption of wind and solar technologies has left regulators around the world grasping for a solution on how to raise prices to the point power companies start building again.

Jim Hughes, CEO of First Solar, one of the largest solar companies in the world, said Thursday there is no “magic pen” that will identify a solution.

“We need to experiment,” he said at the IHS CERAweek energy conference in Houston. “I think there’s a lot of learning to be done by the industry and regulators…. we need to watch our markets develop.”

Coal, nuclear and gas-fired power plant operators in Texas have pushed for a capacity market system, in which generators are paid not just for the power people use but the capacity they have available. That debate has stalled for now but is expected to resume at some point within the next few years.

And he said the verdict on the current market structure is still out for the renewable energy industry.

“I can build it in phases. I can build it smaller… A guy building a gas plant is looking at four to six years development,” Hughes said. “The economics of renewables look very different and the risk profile looks very different.”

As alternative energy technologies become a larger and larger part of the power grid – something most say is inevitable – the big question is how to manage those sources in relation to traditional power plants.

Leonard Birnbaum, CEO of the German power and gas company E.ON, said in all likelihood the answer will have to come region by region, depending on the conditions and fuel sources available.

And for now, the appetite within the industry for big projects like nuclear power plants is waning, he said.

“In a world that is changing so fast, you can’t invest [$10 billion] in one project unless you’re state owned,” Birnbaum said.

Follow James Osborne on Twitter at @osborneja.

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